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Today from the Guardian;
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/23/us-corporations-donate-midterm-campaigns-election-deniers
US corporations gave more than $8m to election deniers’ midterm campaigns
Brands such as the Home Depot and Boeing donated to candidates who falsely claimed that Trump won presidency in 2020
Attendees listen to Donald Trump speak at a rally in Warren, Michigan, on 1 October 2022.
Attendees listen to Donald Trump speak at a rally in Warren, Michigan, on 1 October 2022. Photograph: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images
The fight for democracy is supported by
guardian.org
About this content
Ed Pilkington
@edpilkington
Wed 23 Nov 2022 03.00 EST
Some of the best-known corporations in the US, including AT&T, Boeing, Delta Air Lines and the Home Depot, collectively poured more than $8m into supporting election deniers running for US House and Senate seats in this month’s midterm elections.
‘Extremists didn’t make it’: why Republicans flopped in once-red Arizona
Read more
A study by the non-partisan government watchdog organization Accountable.US, based on the latest filings to the Federal Election Commission, reveals the extent to which big corporations were prepared to back Republican nominees despite their open peddling of false claims undermining confidence in democracy. Though many were ultimately unsuccessful in their election bids, the candidates included several prominent advocates of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from him.
At the top of the list of 20 corporations backing election deniers through their political action committees (Pacs) is a familiar name in the world of rightwing agitating – Koch Industries. According to the Accountable.US review, the Koch energy conglomerate spent $771,000 through its Pac on Republican candidates with a track record of casting doubt on elections.
Koch Industries is the second-largest privately owned company in the US. It is notorious for using its largely oil-related profits to push conservative politics in an anti-government, anti-regulatory direction under its owner brothers, Charles Koch and David Koch, the latter of whom died in 2019.
Close behind Koch is the American Crystal Sugar Company Pac, which spent $630,000 supporting election deniers running for federal office; the AT&T Inc Employee Federal Pac, which contributed $579,000; and the Home Depot Inc Pac, which gave $578,000. Lower down on the list comes the media giant Comcast Corporation & NBC Universal Pac, which contributed $365,000; and the Delta Air Lines Pac, which gave $278,000.
The $8m contributed by the top 20 corporations was just a slice of overall corporate giving to election deniers in the 2022 cycle. An earlier analysis by Accountable.US found that, in total, election deniers benefited to the tune of $65m from corporate interests.
The new study suggests that top corporations that chose to use their financial muscle to enhance the chances of election deniers waged a non-too-successful gamble. The Washington Post has chronicled how 244 Republican election deniers ran for congressional seats in the midterms, and, of those, at least 81 were defeated.
Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, said that the fact that election deniers at both the federal and the state level struggled at the polls should make corporations reconsider their strategies. Backing candidates who advanced conspiracy theories harmful to democracy could damage their public reputations.
“Voters’ rejection of numerous election objectors at the polls should send a clear message to corporations that prioritizing political influence over a healthy democracy could threaten their own bottom line,” Herrig said.
The Guardian reached out to several of the top 20 corporate donors for their response. The Home Depot said that its associate-funded Pac supports candidates “on both sides of the aisle who champion pro-business, pro-retail positions that create jobs and economic growth”.
AT&T and Delta did not immediately reply.
The decision to support election-denier candidates stands in contrast with the strong public stance initially taken by several of the corporations in the wake of the 6 January 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
Boeing released a statement days after the insurrection in which it said it “strongly condemns the violence, lawlessness and destruction that took place in the US Capitol”. In the 2022 cycle the Boeing Company Pac contributed $418,000 to support Republican candidates who had been vocal in forwarding lies questioning the validity of the 2020 presidential election.
Boeing declined to comment.
Among the individual candidates whose bid for federal office was supported by top corporations was Derrick Van Orden, who won a close race to represent a swing district in Wisconsin with backing from Koch Industries. Van Orden, a former Navy Seal, was inside the Capitol grounds on January 6.
Scott Perry received support from the Kochs, AT&T, Boeing and other corporations in his successful campaign to hold onto his House seat in Pennsylvania. Perry was deeply involved in attempts to block Biden’s victory in 2020, and in the weeks after January 6 sought a presidential pardon from Trump.
An older article out of the Guardian;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-fdr-roosevelt-coup-attempt-1930s
Why is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR?
This article is more than 10 months old Sally Denton
Business leaders like JP Morgan and Irénée du Pont were accused by a retired major general of plotting to install a fascist dictator
‘The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR.’ Photograph: Bettmann Archive
Tue 11 Jan 2022 06.08 EST
Donald Trump’s elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt – the 1933 “Wall Street putsch” against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets – no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare.
Many are disillusioned with American democracy. Can Joe Biden win them over?
Francine Prose
Read more
Economic despair gave rise to panic and unrest, and political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country. Populists Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin attacked FDR, spewing vitriolic anti-Jewish, pro-fascist refrains and brandishing the “America first” slogan coined by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.
On 4 March 1933, more than 100,000 people had gathered on the east side of the US Capitol for Roosevelt’s inauguration. The atmosphere was slate gray and ominous, the sky suggesting a calm before the storm. That morning, rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting predictions of a violent revolution. Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the civil war had Washington been so fortified, with armed police guarding federal buildings.
FDR thought government in a civilized society had an obligation to abolish poverty, reduce unemployment, and redistribute wealth. Roosevelt’s bold New Deal experiments inflamed the upper class, provoking a backlash from the nation’s most powerful bankers, industrialists and Wall Street brokers, who thought the policy was not only radical but revolutionary. Worried about losing their personal fortunes to runaway government spending, this fertile field of loathing led to the “traitor to his class” epithet for FDR. “What that fellow Roosevelt needs is a 38-caliber revolver right at the back of his head,” a respectable citizen said at a Washington dinner party.
In a climate of conspiracies and intrigues, and against the backdrop of charismatic dictators in the world such as Hitler and Mussolini, the sparks of anti-Rooseveltism ignited into full-fledged hatred. Many American intellectuals and business leaders saw nazism and fascism as viable models for the US. The rise of Hitler and the explosion of the Nazi revolution, which frightened many European nations, struck a chord with prominent American elites and antisemites such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Hitler’s elite Brownshirts – a mass body of party storm troopers separate from the 100,000-man German army – was a stark symbol to the powerless American masses. Mussolini’s Blackshirts – the military arm of his organization made up of 200,000 soldiers – were a potent image of strength to a nation that felt emasculated.
A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made the plot to overthrow him seem plausible. With restless uncertainty, volatile protests and ominous threats, America’s right wing was inspired to form its own paramilitary organizations. Militias sprung up throughout the land, their self-described “patriots” chanting: “This is despotism! This is tyranny!”
Today’s Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have nothing on their extremist forbears. In 1933, a diehard core of conservative veterans formed the Khaki Shirts in Philadelphia and recruited pro-Mussolini immigrants. The Silver Shirts was an apocalyptic Christian militia patterned on the notoriously racist Texas Rangers that operated in 46 states and stockpiled weapons.
A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made a plot to overthrow him seem plausible
The Gray Shirts of New York organized to remove “Communist college professors” from the nation’s education system, and the Tennessee-based White Shirts wore a Crusader cross and agitated for the takeover of Washington. JP Morgan Jr, one of the nation’s richest men, had secured a $100m loan to Mussolini’s government. He defiantly refused to pay income tax and implored his peers to join him in undermining FDR.
So, when retired US Marine Corps Maj Gen Smedley Darlington Butler claimed he was recruited by a group of Wall Street financiers to lead a fascist coup against FDR and the US government in the summer of 1933, Washington took him seriously. Butler, a Quaker, and first world war hero dubbed the Maverick Marine, was a soldier’s soldier who was idolized by veterans – which represented a huge and powerful voting bloc in America. Famous for his daring exploits in China and Central America, Butler’s reputation was impeccable. He got rousing ovations when he claimed that during his 33 years in the marines: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”
Butler later testified before Congress that a bond-broker and American Legion member named Gerald MacGuire approached him with the plan. MacGuire told him the coup was backed by a group called the American Liberty League, a group of business leaders which formed in response to FDR’s victory, and whose mission it was to teach government “the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property”. Members included JP Morgan, Jr, Irénée du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark of the Singer sewing machine fortune, and the chief executives of General Motors, Birds Eye and General Foods.
The putsch called for him to lead a massive army of veterans – funded by $30m from Wall Street titans and with weapons supplied by Remington Arms – to march on Washington, oust Roosevelt and the entire line of succession, and establish a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers.
As MacGuire laid it out to Butler, the coup was instigated after FDR eliminated the gold standard in April 1933, which threatened the country’s wealthiest men who thought if American currency wasn’t backed by gold, rising inflation would diminish their fortunes. He claimed the coup was sponsored by a group who controlled $40bn in assets – about $800bn today – and who had $300m available to support the coup and pay the veterans. The plotters had men, guns and money – the three elements that make for successful wars and revolutions. Butler referred to them as “the royal family of financiers” that had controlled the American Legion since its formation in 1919. He felt the Legion was a militaristic political force, notorious for its antisemitism and reactionary policies against labor unions and civil rights, that manipulated veterans.
The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the “Wall Street putsch” endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a “gigantic hoax” and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising “the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable” and that democracy was not in real danger. Still, there is much evidence that the nation’s wealthiest men – Republicans and Democrats alike – were so threatened by FDR’s policies that they conspired with antigovernment paramilitarism to stage a coup.
The final report by the congressional committee tasked with investigating the allegations, delivered in February 1935, concluded: “[The committee] received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country”, adding “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”
As Congressman John McCormack who headed the congressional investigation put it: “If General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded … When times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything could happen.”
There is still much that is not known about the coup attempt. Butler demanded to know why the names of the country’s richest men were removed from the final version of the committee’s report. “Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape,” Butler said in a Philadelphia radio interview in 1935. “The big shots weren’t even called to testify. They were all mentioned in the testimony. Why was all mention of these names suppressed from this testimony?”
While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBC’s Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges – and possible execution – if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. The presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said that Roosevelt should have pushed it all through, then reneged on his agreement and prosecuted them.
What might all of this portend for Americans today, as President Biden follows in FDR’s New Deal footsteps while democratic socialist Bernie Sanders also rises in popularity and influence? In 1933, rather than inflame a quavering nation, FDR calmly urged Americans to unite to overcome fear, banish apathy and restore their confidence in the country’s future. Now, 90 years later, a year on from Trump’s own coup attempt, Biden’s tone was more alarming, sounding a clarion call for Americans to save democracy itself, to make sure such an attack “never, never happens again”.
If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.
This article was amended on 12 January 2022 to rewrite a sentence in line with Guardian style guidance.
Sally Denton is the author of The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Her forthcoming book is The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land
I've checked out Mastodon, thought it was a bit awkward and time consuming. Will check out Post, like you I have a lot of people and business that I follow on twitter and hope that a lot of twitters makes a change to others. Twitter going down in the gutter.
I've been checking out Tribel for alternative. Many twitters are going there and growing.
Public
2 hours ago
Crime
Wanted to thank Tribel for swiftly banning QAnon terrorist Marjorie Taylor Greene from this platform due to her needing to be de-platformed over her role in sedition and insurrection. She should be in prison, not in Congress and not on social media.
https://www.tribel.com/therickydavila/wall
Well that's a general market sentiment, but the market has generally been too exuberant for some time now and there is real risk that it's still being in that mode, starving for things the way they were. Resetting has a way to go still, both in evaluations and sentiment or expectations. Given the past, that's a hard struggle to do for the mindset that the market has been conditioned to be in. I think we might be going through the consequences caused by our past longer and deeper than the general sentiment is allowing for.
There's lot of pressure on the Fed from different sources to keep it at those levels you spoke of, but many macro situations that is beyond the control of the Fed are going to rear their ugly head and come into play. The conflict between the two (the pressures vs the macro situations) are going to be interesting to say the least and we're going to need the next few quarters in 23 to see how this all plays out.
Whatever plays out, it's more than likely that it will be harsher than the expectations.
"With Bullard just saying that the Fed Funds may have to rise to 5-7%..."
Some interesting remarks on that;
Did Bullard Undershoot? Stifel Economists Say Fed Funds Rate May Need to Go to 8% or Even 9%.
By Vivien Lou Chen, MarketWatch
Nov. 19, 2022 10:50 am ET
https://www.barrons.com/articles/inflation-fed-funds-rate-51668872977?refsec=economics&mod=topics_economics
That's traditionally true, and margin on the "coin" trading is very limited. At least that is what I've read and heard, haven't really spent a whole lot of time on research on it. What I've heard and the little I've read about it, the margin is with the futures or options with the underlying being mostly bitcoin.
That's with the actual "coin" and mostly with general retail, but there has been a lot of big money involved with lending in this space, with untraditional (not sure what "traditional" means in crypto though) forms of "margin" or lending of funds based on certain assets that is in risk of being called in. So I've read anyway, I'm definitely not any expert or even an amateur when it comes to this, nor want to be either.
There are many articles such as this one that discusses the risk of margin or lending that has taken place.
100% with you there. Never even traded any of it, let alone investing. What investment? Sentiment is the only worth, and like I said, that's on a big downtrend. The utility part of it still needs a lot of improvement and regulation.
The margin calls are going to be disaster for many, already is. There are some pretty large players, banks, Black Rock, etc that are going to be taking a loss and getting whatever they can pulling out of their risk exposures in Crypto. We've got more dominoes to fall in this space, narrowing down the survivors.
Wow. Year ago, bitcoin worth about $60k, now whatever it falls to, sentiment on a downtrend.
Binance backs out of FTX rescue, leaving the crypto exchange on the brink of collapse
PUBLISHED WED, NOV 9 20223:55 PM ESTUPDATED 4 MIN AGO
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/binance-backs-out-of-ftx-rescue-leaving-the-crypto-exchange-on-the-brink-of-collapse.html
A longtime Pennsylvania state representative was re-elected in a landslide – even though he died last month.
Democrat Anthony “Tony” DeLuca, Pennsylvania’s longest-serving state representative, was the choice in more than 85% of votes cast.
DeLuca, 85, died on 9 October from lymphoma, a disease he had twice previously fended off.
By the time of his death it was too late to change the ballot or put forth another candidate for his seat. While his opponent, Green candidate Queonia “Zarah” Livingston, accounted for more than 14% of the vote, DeLuca’s victory has triggered a special election that will be held on a later date....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/09/pennsylvania-dead-democrat-tony-deluca-victory
Tropical Storm Nicole
MIAMI (AP) — Tropical Storm Nicole forced people from their homes in the Bahamas and threatened to grow into a rare November hurricane in Florida on Wednesday, shutting down airports and Disney World while prompting evacuation orders that included former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
https://apnews.com/article/hurricanes-miami-florida-storms-weather-3132c7afa0d80797296f7bc6cd9d3a97?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_07
Minimizing our energy costs that is many times past the price at the pump or the therms or watts on your meter, at an above cost of trillions every year to the American people, and in order for society to just survive to use any energy, completely and fully depends on our abilities to DRAMATICALY reduce the usage and demand side of oil and gas.
The main reliability of o&g is that all the extra costs of its' usage will continue to grow exponentially and further demise the US and world populations. That's the "failure" that is and will happen more in the future with the continued use of o&g that is in the projections.
These theories have been known and expressed for decades by an overwhelming consensus of science and in every passing year gets proven to become facts. Way to many facts proven to list or even go over in any debate.
Some other facts on how that's not being done;
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/mar/09/facebook-posts/oil-production-bidens-first-year-par-trump/
We've been giving all the "handouts" to China the past few decades with previous administrations which has dug the gigantic "hole" that this administration is finally starting to crawl our way out of it. About time some of that money gets to developing our own resources. China has control over 50% of all the Li mining in the world and 75% of the big battery factories.
It was US companies, RCA, a US co at the time, that started and developed the chip industry in Taiwan then selling to GE which in turn sold to foreign investors. For decades since then it's been US money that has put into other places but here. We've been handing out trillions of our hard earned money into the development elsewhere (in the long run, mostly to China).
So the Biden administration is the one that has done this much into developing this nations resources and starting to dig out of a very deep hole that the previous administrations put us in. All the last one did was give money to China for all the red hats and political flags produced over there and paid more taxes to China than was paid to the US.
China has also done nothing but give handouts constantly to their production and getting control of bulk of Li and batteries (all types) and working on taking over the 1/2 a trillion $ a year of sales to the US from Taiwan.
Yea I think that the some of this big business that has been making big profits from "handing out" all our money developing other countries production to developing the US resources and supplies. But that's not the way the world works and somehow the big boys still got to make their profit, hence our "handouts".
Because if we don't develop here, our "handouts" will continue to going over there. Of course newer forms of energy besides big oil will activate some politicians anger and bs misinformation trying to protect their 100's of millions of money from the big oil lobby which in the end comes out of our pocket one way or another.
So we have to get something done to encourage American companies to develop instead of the previous ways that was being done and stop damaging our environment so much which is costing the American people trillions every year on top of the price at the pump.
If it takes companies like LAC to create a full American company with more jobs and getting a "handout", so be it. Because without incentives, it will never happen and that money will still be being spent, just not on the US. So good to see that this administration is trying to fill the horrific hole the previous one(s) have dug.
On a side note, still making good money with LAC. Got out, back in and trading along the way. All goes in how you play it.
Waterlogged wheat, rotting oranges: five crops devastated by a year of extreme weather
Crops are struggling to grow – and produce the same yields – as they would under normal weather conditions
Processing tomatoes dried up by heat and drought hang on vines, a farmer stands in the background with his hands on hips
California usually produces about 30% of the world’s processing tomatoes Photograph: Nathan Frandino/Reuters
Supported by
11th Hour Project
About this content
Cecilia Nowell
Tue 1 Nov 2022 05.00 EDT
From Hurricanes Fiona and Ian, to flooding in eastern Kentucky and a record dry summer as the western US entered its 22nd year of a once-in-a-millennium megadrought, the US has already seen more than two dozen major climate disasters with losses exceeding $1bn (£864m).
Our food system isn’t ready for the climate crisis
Read more
On top of this economic toll, extreme weather is also upending the food system in the US and much of the world. As the climate crisis causes temperatures to rise, precipitation patterns to shift and drought conditions to lengthen, many crops are struggling to grow – and produce the same yields – as they would under normal weather conditions. In some parts of the country, crops that require dry conditions are getting too much rain, while in others, they’re not getting enough.
Changes to growing seasons, limitations on water rights and increasingly powerful storms are all forcing growers to consider whether to shut down, relocate or otherwise alter their operations. Extreme weather events are also disrupting the shipping of food across the country and world.
These five crops tell the story of the havoc the climate crisis is already causing.
Florida’s oranges torn off trees
Browning oranges rot on the ground.
Oranges rot on the ground at Roy Petteway’s citrus and cattle farm after they were knocked off the trees from Hurricane Ian in Zolfo Springs, Florida. Photograph: Chris O’Meara/AP
After Hurricane Ian ripped through Florida’s Gulf coast counties in late September, citrus growers in the state’s main agricultural counties began reporting that 50% to 90% of their fruit had been torn off the trees by high winds and rain.
The hurricane “came right up through the heart of the citrus belt”, said Ray Royce, executive director of the Highlands Citrus Growers Association. Royce reports that in some counties growers have lost as much as 80% of their fruit. Florida orange growers were already facing a challenging year as greening disease, an invasive bacterium that thrives in warm climates and can kill trees and cause fruit to drop early, hit their plants.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted that the state will produce 28m boxes of oranges this season, down 32% from the previous season. This would be the smallest harvest since 1943. And the impact of Hurricane Ian may not yet be over, Royce said. In some areas, the storm didn’t just cause fruit to fall, but entirely uprooted or flooded trees.
Although this storm was particularly devastating, he adds that Florida citrus growers have weathered difficult hurricane seasons before, such as Hurricane Irma in 2017. “We’re an industry that’s at the mercy of the weather.”
Rice left unplanted amid drought
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1b2bf696708cabe3c102dd0321399d5749fc8244/0_0_5489_3296/master/5489.jpg?width=880&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none
Irrigation water runs along a dried-up ditch between rice farms in Richvale, California in 2014. This year, a lack of water in the state meant many farmers opted not to plant.
Irrigation water runs along a dried-up ditch between rice farms in Richvale, California, in 2014. This year, a lack of water in the state meant many farmers opted not to plant. Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP
Just three crops – rice, wheat and corn – provide nearly half of the world’s calories. And this year rice had a particularly tough growing season.
In California, rice farmers sowed the lowest number of seeds since the 1950s. According to the California Rice Commission, only 250,000 acres of rice will be harvested this year, about half of a typical season.
“Reservoirs were so low and the snowpack was so bad that literally half the crop was unplanted,” said Daniel Sumner, professor of agricultural economics at UC Davis. Although rice growers generally have very senior water rights, which means they’re the first ones entitled to any available water, there just wasn’t enough water for growers to make it through a season, he said, so many opted not to plant. This past year marked California’s fourth in a row facing drought.
According to a report published by Sumner and his colleagues at UC Davis, California’s Sacramento River valley – which usually exports about half its rice to China and Japan – is facing a $1.3bn (£1.1bn) economic loss, with 14,300 agricultural jobs lost.
California’s tomato crop dwindles
Tomatoes hang from a vine on a farm in Los Banos, California.
Tomatoes, dried up by the heat, hang from a vine on a farm in Los Banos, California. Photograph: Nathan Frandino/Reuters
In August, the USDA forecasted that California would only grow 10.5m tons of tomatoes, down 10% from its estimates at the beginning of the year, as drought causes them to dry up on the vine.
California usually produces about 30% of the world’s processing tomatoes – the tomatoes used in paste, sauce and ketchup. But researchers predict that the global supply of processing tomatoes could fall by 6% in the next 30 years due to climate change.
Even though tomatoes are “an incredibly efficient user of water”, Sumner said, the drought “was even worse than people could have imagined”.
The high demand and reduced supply are reflected in tomato prices. Going into this growing season, Sumner says tomatoes reached the highest contract prices on record – about $100 (£86) per ton compared with last year’s record $90 (£78) per ton.
As temperatures increase in current tomato-producing regions, like California and Italy, the plants may no longer thrive, and growers could begin shifting their work to cooler climates, like northern California and China.
Wheat scorched by heat, waterlogged by rains
A ruler in the ground measuring wheat plants.
Spring wheat plants stunted by drought stress near Larimore, North Dakota. Photograph: Karl Plume/Reuters
As the war in Ukraine cut off the country’s large wheat exports, wheat growers across the world faced a difficult year due to extreme weather. Heatwaves across France, Spain, and India scorched wheat crops, while US growers struggled to survive a dry winter and then a waterlogged spring.
In the US, growers typically plant hard red winter wheat, used in bread, in the fall and sow spring wheat, for bagels and pizza, in the spring. The winter wheat harvest fell 25% this year as drought hit midwestern states like Kansas. Then, high rainfall and a surprise spring blizzard flooded spring crops.
Researchers at the Environmental Defense Fund predict that Kansas will only continue to see winter wheat yields drop – by 2030, 8% of Kansas counties could see winter wheat yields fall by more than 5%. To get ahead of climate change, scientists around the world have begun breeding new varieties of wheat. But according to a study published in Nature earlier this year, climate change still might outpace any yields from those new crops.
New Mexico’s green chilis flooded by monsoon season
In southern New Mexico, record rainfall disrupted the state’s green chilli harvest. At Cinco Estrella Chile Farms in Lemitar, owner Glen Duggins says a combination of heavy rainfall and a labor shortage flooded his fields and then overtook the green chilli crop with weeds.
“Back in the day we packed 800 sacks [a day] regularly. I didn’t expect to do that now, but we should have been able to do 300 to 400 a day,” said Duggins. But his team didn’t even harvest 1,000 sacks over the whole season, from late July to early October. Green chilli “likes dry weather, this was a little too much”.
Climate crisis made summer drought 20 times more likely, scientists find
Read more
The green chilli plant grown in New Mexico thrives best in temperatures between 70F (21C) and 85F (29C). Too hot and the fruit won’t form. Too much rain and the roots will begin to rot.
Normally, southern New Mexico provides the perfect climate for the chilli harvest. But this year, parts of the state recorded their wettest monsoon seasons since 1893. Although the state struggled with severe drought early in the summer – with 45% of the state rating in “exceptional” drought, according to the US Drought Monitor – only about 1% of the state was still in that high state of drought by the end of monsoon season.
Duggins is optimistic that he’ll still be able to harvest some of his crop going into the red chilli season – when the green chilli plant begins to ripen – but if profits continue to fall, he’s worried he and his neighbors will have to consider shutting down their farms.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/01/climate-crisis-us-food-system-five-crops
Diesel Is Far From the Only Shortage U.S. Is Facing
BY ANNA SKINNER ON 10/31/22 AT 3:35 PM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/diesel-far-only-shortage-us-facing-1755853
Americans experienced the impact of labor and product shortages in earnest during the COVID-19 pandemic. More than two years later, shortages continue to arise and impact Americans.
Earlier this month, Americans learned there was less than a month of diesel supply left in storage. It is the lowest storage supply since 2008 and has led to skyrocketing prices as U.S. refineries struggle to keep up with demand.
But it doesn't stop there. Dozens of other sectors are struggling to meet demand––and the U.S. has experienced shortages ranging from employees to medications to parts needed for U.S. defense contractors' weapons.
Stacks of Land O Lakes Butter
Butter is displayed on shelves for sale at a grocery store. Lower milk production on U.S. farms and labor shortages at processing plants have helped to push butter prices up nearly 25 percent in the last year, outpacing increases in most other groceries. Americans might soon see a shortage of dairy products.
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
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Kaitlin Wowak, an associate professor of operations management at Notre Dame University, said there are reasons why Americans are hurting for certain items. In diesel's case, dwindling U.S. supplies are exacerbated by a ban on Russian imports. Wowak said the Russian-Ukraine war is impeding other sectors, too, as a slowed global supply chain is keeping suppliers from receiving materials in time.
Medication Shortages
Labor economist Oren Levin-Waldman said this could impact other shortages as well, such as medication shortages among Adderall and Amoxicillin.
China still implements a zero-COVID policy, leading to communities being locked down for weeks or months until the virus fades, which can cause a backlog of orders for certain materials and products.
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"Things just don't get shipped over," Levin-Waldman said. "It creates a product shortage."
Food Shortages
Shortages are caused by national issues, too, such as logistics problems and trucking and air transport issues. For example, dairy production is down because of a labor shortage, which leads to a shortage of dairy products like butter just as the American holiday season is beginning to ramp up. Wowak said if products that have a short shelf life––like butter––are caught in transportation delays, suppliers might have to toss the items when they do arrive because of the expiration date.
In other cases, weather and outbreaks of avian flu have impacted the supply of potatoes and turkeys, respectively. Severe drought conditions also have decreased the supply of rice, winter wheat, tomatoes and olive oil, according to a recent report by Money Talks News.
Labor Shortages
Along with product shortages, certain industries have struggled to staff employees after the pandemic. Along with creating a crunch in those positions, workforce shortages can contribute to shortages in other areas.
"Getting people back in the workforce and having them go back to full-time positions is really hard. We have seen labor shortages across the board in a number of industries," Wowak told Newsweek. "When you're low on labor, sometimes production capacity decreases because you don't have people in all the stations, so that can contribute to supply shortage."
The most affected job sectors are those requiring employees to be present in person–– such as police officers, teachers, manufacturers and bus drivers. Labor economist Oren Levin-Waldman said as employees transitioned to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, they might hesitate against returning to the office for jobs that required them to be physically present. The increased ability to work remotely is driving a labor shortage in other sectors.
READ MORE
Butter shortage looms over bakeries as holidays approach: "My nightmare"
U.S. faces inflation timebomb poised to explode just before the holidays
"Those people who discovered they enjoy working remotely, they don't want to go back to an office situation if they can avoid it," Levin-Waldman told Newsweek.
Will the Shortages End Soon?
Supply shortages could have a grim outlook. Levin-Waldman said midterm elections aren't likely to influence most shortages Americans are experiencing, as candidates are debating topics like inflation and economy but not so much the underlying issues contributing to those topics. Levin-Waldman said that one lesson politicians should have learned from the pandemic was sourcing industries in the U.S. to prevent global supply chain issues but that "nobody wants to discuss those issues."
"Nobody in the midterm right now is talking about these transformations [moving more operations to the U.S.] but those transformations are key to understanding some of the larger issues people are talking about with inflation, unemployment and general distrust in government," he said.
Happy Halloween;
All real
That guy's preditor.
Inside the world of real-life vampires in New Orleans and Atlanta
By Scottie Andrew, CNN
Published 8:28 AM EDT, Sat October 29, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/29/us/real-vampires-new-orleans-atlanta-cec/index.html
Forget the Monster Mash. This Halloween, Everyone’s Trick or Twerking.
The suburbs are spellbound by a jig called the witches’ dance; brooms required
Yes, that was a flash mob of witches twerking with brooms to German dance music you spotted this Halloween season.
https://m.wsj.net/video-atmo/20221027/a05b7a54-6146-4942-9114-84e37e57e7c4/2/witchedit3_1920.mp4
They are taking over some U.S. town squares with what’s known as the witches’ dance, often performed to the upbeat rap tune “Schüttel deinen Speck,” which translates to “Shake Your Bacon,” by German reggae-pop artist Peter Fox......
https://www.wsj.com/articles/halloween-celebrations-witches-dance-trick-or-twerking-11667047485?mod=itp_wsj&mod=djemITP_h
GOP bracing for Trump indictment soon after Election Day
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 10/31/22 6:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3710063-gop-bracing-for-trump-indictment-soon-after-election-day/
Republican aides and strategists privately expect Attorney General Merrick Garland to pursue an indictment of former President Trump within 60 to 90 days after Election Day, predicting the window for prosecuting Trump will close once the 2024 presidential campaign gains momentum.
Republican aides on Capitol Hill and veteran party strategists emphasize they don’t have any inside information on what Garland might do, but they say the attorney general is under heavy pressure from Democrats to act and the deadline for pursuing an indictment is fast approaching.
GOP aides also warn that an indictment of Trump by the Biden administration would further polarize the nation and likely strengthen Trump’s support from the Republican Party’s base as the former president and his allies would frame the Department of Justice’s prosecution as a political witch hunt.
“A couple of weeks after the election, I assume that Garland will indict Trump,” said one veteran Republican aide, expressing a sentiment shared by several other GOP aides and strategists.
A second Republican aide warned an indictment “could actually end up helping the [former] president politically.”
“People have been talking about splintering support and dampening enthusiasm among Republican voters for him. An indictment could actually galvanize and reunify Republicans around him,” the aide said, predicting the Republican backlash to an indictment would be stronger if Garland brings an indictment later in the 2024 election cycle.
“There’s a substantial risk in waiting,” the source added.
Republican aides and strategists point out the party base quickly rallied behind Trump after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in early August.
Before the FBI raid, Trump had mulled announcing his 2024 presidential campaign well before the midterm election as it appeared he was losing support among Republican voters to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But GOP aides on Capitol Hill believe any anxiety Trump might have felt about losing relevance with the GOP base was ameliorated after it rallied around him in August in response to the FBI’s action.
The backlash will be stronger if Garland brings an indictment once Trump’s expected 2024 presidential campaign is up and running, they warn.
The second Republican aide said “the decision Garland has to make is really tough,” saying that he has a strong potential case to charge Trump with violating Section 793 of the Espionage Act for taking highly classified government documents to Mar-a-Lago. At the same time, the aide warned that any prosecution would “plunge the country which is already so divided … into a potentially precarious situation.”
Garland has played his cards close to the vest, showing little indication of whether he will charge the former president. But the FBI’s raid in August made clear he is willing to investigate him.
There are actually two different investigatory probes that could lead to indictments of Trump.
One is related to the documents taken from the White House and found at Mar-a-Lago, while the other concerns the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capital.
While many Democrats would like to see Justice charge Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 attack, Jeffrey Robbins, a former federal prosecutor, said federal prosecutors’ strongest case would be to indict Trump for violating the Espionage Act in connection to the Mar-a-Lago documents.
“I think that the Espionage Act violations are relatively straightforward, even self-evident, and that the Department likely already has substantial evidence of obstruction of justice,” he said.
GOP aides and strategists warn there’s a risk of political violence in response to any indictment against Trump. The former president warned last month that if the Department of Justice indicts him, “you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.”
“I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it,” he warned.
The former president hasn’t made a formal announcement of his decision but has given every indication that he will launch another bid for the White House next year.
Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that an indictment wouldn’t stop him from running for president.
“If a thing like that happened, I would have no prohibition against running,” he said.
A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Vin Weber, a Republican strategist, said it would be a “bad idea” to indict Trump because it would sow more political discord into a deeply divided nation, and waiting well into the 2024 election cycle would only make it worse.
“I think an indictment is a bad idea, but I think that Garland is under such political pressure by the Democratic left that it may well happen,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea and I don’t want to be misinterpreted as supporting [it.] If it’s going to happen, though, it should happen as soon after the [midterm] election as possible because it complicates everybody’s plans: Biden’s plans, Trump’s plans, every other Republican’s plans,” he said.
“If this is going to happen, it’s not in anyone’s interest to prolong this process until the presidential process for ’24 is underway and drop this like a bomb into the middle of an already established presidential field,” he added.
Some legal experts agree that Garland needs to act soon if he intends to prosecute Trump to minimize the appearance that the Department of Justice is acting from political motivation.
“I think that the department will strive to bring an indictment as soon as it can consistent with other constraints, in order to at least minimize the ‘legs’ on the inevitable barrage of charges it will face that by indicting the former president it is interfering with an upcoming presidential election,” said Robbins.
He said the Justice Department “will face a storm of such criticism whenever it acts, but doing so as soon as possible at least provides some defense, however limited, against that inevitable criticism.”
Robbins said Garland has good reason to postpone the announcement of an indictment until after the 2022 midterm election because otherwise it would immediately become the top political issue in Senate and House races around the country.
“Had he indicted right before the midterms it truly would have rocked the indictment with criticisms that there had been a violation of the de facto policy within the DOJ” not to launch prosecutions of political figures within two or three months of an election and “really would have undercut the credibility of the indictment and in addition could very well have affected the midterms,” he added.
But other prominent legal experts don’t think Garland needs to announce an indictment within the next 60 to 90 days since the first contest of the Republican presidential primary won’t take place until January 2024.
“I doubt the timing of the midterm elections has much to do with the timing of any indictment of Donald Trump,” said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.
“The next time he will appear on the ballot, if ever, will be in the 2024 primary elections, which begin in January of 2024. The DOJ policy would not come into play until 60 days or so before that date,” she said.
The Hill’s Morning Report — Calls for restraint after Paul Pelosi attack
Why the fate of Medicare and Social Security is a midterm issue
She said Garland “has all of 2023 to play with.”
Faced with mounting political pressure on both sides, Garland has stayed tight-lipped about prosecuting Trump. He did reveal in August, however, that he “personally” approved the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” he said in August.
Workers leave iPhone factory in Zhengzhou amid COVID curbs
Workers who assemble Apple Inc.’s new iPhone have walked out of their factory to avoid COVID-19 curbs after some coworkers were quarantined following a virus outbreak
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/workers-leave-iphone-factory-zhengzhou-amid-covid-curbs-92412834
ByZEN SOO Associated Press
October 30, 2022, 11:57 PM
On Location: October 30, 2022
Catch up on the developing stories making headlines.
HONG KONG -- Workers who assemble Apple Inc.’s new iPhone have walked out of their factory in northern China to avoid COVID-19 curbs after some coworkers were quarantined following a virus outbreak.
Videos circulating on Chinese social media platforms showed people said to be Foxconn workers climbing over fences and walking down a road laden with their belongings.
The scenes underscore growing public discontent with China’s “zero-COVID” strategy, where the government seeks to stamp out outbreaks by implementing strict testing, isolation and lockdown measures where infections are detected.
Outbreaks have led to entire cities going into lockdown. In the latest wave of infections, Shanghai Disney Resort said Monday that it would close as of Monday for an indefinite amount of time “to follow the requirement of pandemic prevention and control.”
In an online notice, the park apologized for the inconvenience and said it would provide refunds or exchanges for those affected by its closure.
The Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, Henan province, can accommodate up to 350,000 workers and is one of the largest factories in China assembling products for Apple Inc., including its latest iPhone 14 devices.
Not all the videos that showed workers purportedly leaving the facility could be verified. It was unclear if the workers leaving the facility had escaped or if they were allowed to leave.
Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Volunteers from nearby villages put out food and drinks for the Foxconn workers. One such volunteer, who asked to be identified only by his surname Zhang out of privacy concerns, was put in charge of distributing supplies that his village in Xingyang county had prepared. He said that the people shown in a video he uploaded to the short-video platform Douyin were Foxconn workers because they would have to take that road if they were leaving the facility.
It was unclear how many people are currently employed at the Zhengzhou factory, how many of them have left and how many were affected by factory's COVID-19 curbs.
Earlier this week, media reports said the factory had implemented a “closed-loop” system largely restricting workers to movements between their residences and the plant.
Local media reports said that Foxconn workers complained of poor food quality and a lack of medical care for those who tested positive amid worries infections could be spreading. The company denied rumors that 20,000 people in the plant had been infected with COVID-19.
Cities near Zhengzhou have urged Foxconn workers to report to local authorities if they plan to return to their hometowns to allow preparation of appropriate isolation measures.
Posts on the Zhengzhou government’s public WeChat account said Foxconn issued notices Sunday to workers at the factory, pledging to ensure the safety, legitimate rights and incomes of those who stayed.
A day after the videos circulated of workers leaving the factory on foot, Foxconn and several local governments arranged transportation for employees choosing to return home. It wasn't clear how much choice they were given in the matter.
Health care workers deserve better than to live in fear
BY DR. SHOSHANA UNGERLEIDER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/29/22 10:00 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3710221-health-care-workers-deserve-better-than-to-live-in-fear/
Police respond to an active shooter incident at Methodist Dallas Medical Center on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. Two hospital employees were shot during the incident, according to police. (Liesbeth Powers/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
“I’m an ICU nurse and this is my biggest fear,” read one of the many messages I received on social media last weekend after a gunman opened fire at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, killing two nurses. Reading these messages made my heart sink and my pulse race at the same time.
I’m a practicing general internal medicine physician, and though I’ve met some of the bravest individuals in medicine, we’ve reached a tipping point. People in my profession are scared. With gun violence on the rise alongside dangerous, anti-science misinformation about health care, we’re constantly left worrying about what could happen to us, even when we should be focused on the health of our patients. The Dallas shooting isn’t the first time this has occurred. This past June, four people – including three hospital staff – were killed by a shooter at Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just a couple of weeks ago, a man visiting a Little Rock, Arkansas hospital was killed by an acquaintance, according to police, in a seemingly random act of violence.
This all comes on the heels of a nationwide rise in violence against medical workers. More than 8-in-10 emergency physicians have reported that violence in their workplaces has increased, with 45 percent noting a spike in incidents in the past five years. Nationally, there have been 656 mass shootings this year alone — over 2 a day. In 2020, over 45,000 people died from gun-related injuries, including suicide and murder.
To add further injury to insult, health care workers are increasingly operating under draconian, political restrictions due to the over-politicization of health care. Abortion is now illegal or heavily restricted in at least t12 states, with more attempting to pass bans. As a result, lifesaving drugs are being denied to patients because they could have an abortive effect. These laws have left doctors with a minefield of legal and ethical dilemmas as they attempt to deliver the care patients need, while not risking arrest or other repercussions.
Our nation’s health care workers deserve more than just our words of support. They deserve action, and there’s something we can do.
In March 2018, I was the lead organizer of the March For Our Lives rally in San Francisco which drew an estimated 75,000 people to City Hall. I can tell you that there is certainly power when people come together around a shared vision. Just following the Feb. 14, 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I went on social media to see what was planned for our city and found nothing. So, I created an event online and invited friends to join students at San Francisco City Hall to support the national movement. To my surprise, within 48 hours, we had over 25,000 people RSVP to attend. I was shocked when I stood on that stage to introduce the incredible student activists — and took in a sea of people for as far as I could see.
This coming election requires the same level of support and bravery that those 75,000 people showed on the streets of San Francisco. People around the country need it, including your doctors, nurses and other health care workers. This means voting for common sense gun laws reinstituting the assault weapons ban, red flag laws which allows for temporary removal of firearms from a person who is believed to be a danger to others or themselves and universal background checks. But it also means voting for freedom.
As Election Day quickly approaches, make no mistake, freedom is on the ballot. More than just the freedom to choose, a vote for Democrats is a vote for freedom from politicians making your medical decisions for you. A vote for Democrats is a vote for common sense gun laws that keep gun violence out of our communities — whether it’s hospitals, schools or places of worship. Lastly, a vote for Democrats is a vote for governance that respects science, so medical professionals, like me, can feel safe while doing our jobs.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We have the opportunity this November to chart a course that will build safer, stronger communities. We have the ability to secure our freedoms and protect choice, while protecting doctors, nurses and other health care workers from violence.
Vote wisely.
Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, is an internal medicine physician in San Francisco, host of “TED Health” and the founder of endwellproject.org
Sasse was "thrilled" to work with the faculty, but the faculty not so much. The New GOP knows they have to control education, education has been to much knowledge given about them. What else is there to expect from a Fascist state.
University of Florida faculty has ‘no confidence’ in Sasse as potential president
BY ELIZABETH CRISP - 10/28/22 1:11 PM ET
https://thehill.com/homenews/3709312-university-of-florida-faculty-has-no-confidence-in-sasse-as-potential-president/
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) received a vote of “no confidence” from the University of Florida’s faculty over growing controversy that he was chosen to serve as the institution’s next president.
“The next President should come already equipped to lead an institution of this caliber rather than aiming to learn on the job,” the Faculty Senate resolution reads. “Anything less will result in a lack of faith in leadership.”
Sasse, who has been in the U.S. Senate since 2015, emerged as the lone finalist after a secretive search for the university’s next leader. The University of Florida board of trustees is set to take up Sasse’s appointment on Tuesday.
In their resolution, Faculty Senate members argued that the confidential process that left just one candidate for the position was politically motivated, after the state adopted a new law backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and GOP lawmakers that led to more privacy in college and university leadership searches.
“The process of the thirteenth Presidential search, conducted in accordance with the updated Florida State Bill 520, has undermined the trust and confidence of the University of Florida Faculty Senate in the selection of the sole finalist Dr. Ben Sasse,” they wrote in the resolution, which passed in a 67-15 vote.
Sasse, who worked at Midland Lutheran College in Nebraska for four years before running for Senate, has generally received mixed reviews as far as his potential as university president. Students have protested his candidacy largely due to his past remarks opposing same-sex marriage.
Sasse reportedly told attendees of a campus Q&A session earlier this month that he took positions as senator “that represent the views of Nebraskans” and being the university’s president would be a “completely different job.”
In a news release announcing his selection, Sasse called Florida “the most interesting university in America right now.”
“It’s the most important institution in the nation’s most economically dynamic state — and its board, faculty and graduates are uniquely positioned to lead this country through an era of disruption,” Sasse said in the statement.
“The caliber of teaching and research at UF is unmistakable, carried out through the core principles of shared governance and academic freedom. I’m thrilled about the opportunity to work alongside one of the nation’s most outstanding faculties.”
Interesting but not surprising. Sorry, no link, came over in the news in my ToS Platform and can't link it. Here's a useful link to FollowTheMoney site though with the three govs searched.
www.followthemoney.org/show-me
10/28/22 15:18:55: A Sinister Reason May Be Behind Governors' Opposition To Cannabis Legalization
As one Republican governor after another rejects President Biden’s suggestion to pardon simple cannabis possession convictions, one wonders what they're thinking. After all, cannabis legalization is all the rage these days, with support skyrocketing and midterms approaching. Even the President is leaning in that direction with his recent pardons of thousands of federal cannabis offenders.
A quick trip over to FollowTheMoney.org might shed some light on at least three governors who remain adamant, despite the will of their constituents, about keeping weed illegal and people locked up tight for violations.
Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas, Bill Lee of Tennessee and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas who all rushed to publicly pan Biden's pardon request happen to have received a total of $263,875 from donors linked to the private prison industry, David Sirota pointed out. Hutchinson received less than $10 grand. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb also joined the unforgiving group though his donors showed no private prison connections.
Is The Anti-Cannabis Lobby Keeping The Beds Filled In Private Prisons?
The U.S. has a combination of government-run prisons and private, for-profit prisons. We also have the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world. This translates to over two million prisoners nationwide with 45% imprisoned for drug offenses, including many for cannabis, according to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
A total of 26 states and the federal government use private corporations such as the GEO Group (NYSE:GEO), CoreCivic (NYSE: CXW) (formerly Corrections Corporation of America, CCA), Management and Training Corporation and LaSalle Corrections, which combined incarcerated nearly 100,000 Americans in 2020. Since then, the number of people incarcerated in private prisons has increased by 14%.
Then there’s Palantir (NYSE:PLTR), the secretive data-mining firm co-founded by Trump adviser Peter Thiel who also co-founded PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) and Atai Life Sciences (NASDAQ: ATAI) psychedelics company. Palantir, which specializes in big data analytics, has faced sizzling criticism for its work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Let’s Look At Florida's Anti-Cannabis Lobby, As An Exampe
Private prisons in Florida are very busy. In fact, the prison population has doubled since 2000 and is still growing despite Biden's 2021 executive order to end their use and not renew any contracts. The Washington Post reported that GEO and CoreCivic donated nearly $2.5 million to the GOP of Florida PAC over the last two decades, which covered the campaigns of Sen. Marco Rubio and former Governor and now Sen. Rick Scott who received a six-figure donation from GEO seemingly encouraging him to oppose the legalization of medical marijuana. Current Gov. Ron DeSantis has grudgingly accepted MMJ though he has also said he’d never sign a full legalization bill.
Who Owns All These Private Prison Stocks?
Fidelity, BlackRock (NYSE:BLK), State Street (NYSE:STT) and Vanguard are all big private prison investors. BlackRock is the largest investor in CoreCivic with a stake of 15.38%.
CoreCivic and rival GEO Group have faced numerous lawsuits and accusations of housing people in unsafe conditions and keeping inmates as long as they can to maximize revenue. The stock of CoreCivic, the first to operate both private prisons and for-profit immigration detention centers, took a beating recently due to the above.
Bill Keller, award-winning journalist and founding editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project told The Guardian recently that it was President Reagan who first pushed “the idea of privately run, for-profit prisons. Since the new prison owners were paid the same way as hotel proprietors, by occupancy, they had no incentive to prepare prisoners for release.”
So, without those 45,000 cannabis prisoners, there will be lots more empty beds in prisons, both public and private. Any questions?
Another smokers incident? They really should stop throwing their butts around so carelessly and shouldn't put their buts where they don't belong.
Visegrád 24 liked
MAKS 22????
@Maks_NAFO_FELLA
6h
Saint-Petersburg
25 OCT, 17:47
Some 160 firefighters, 45 vehicles tackling major blaze in St. Petersburg
The area of ??fire was 12 thousand square meters
https://tass.com/emergencies/1527319
We seem to be in the era of giving the sickest worst people the biggest platform and followings for their abilities in doing the most damage to society that possibly could be done. Perfect examples are people like Demon Kanye, Traitor Trump, and Alex Jones, with all of their ensembles.
LOCAL NEWS
Holocaust Museum of LA flooded with antisemitic messages after offering Kanye West a private tour
los angeles
BY CBSLA STAFF
OCTOBER 24, 2022 / 9:21 PM / CBS LOS ANGELES
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/holocaust-museum-of-la-flooded-with-antisemitic-messages-after-offering-kanye-west-a-private-tour/
The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles said it has been flooded with antisemitic messages after artist Kanye West rejected their offer of a private tour.
The influx of hateful messages comes after West, who legally changed his name to Ye, made a series of antisemitic remarks. Despite his comments, the CEO of the Holocaust Museum of L.A. Beth Kean and the museum offered a private tour to West hoping that it would change his views...........................
Holocaust Museum LA
@hmla1961
https://twitter.com/hmla1961/status/
Some consolation, but payments never cover the damage done.
Kanye West’s antisemitism cost him Adidas and most of his empire
The sportswear giant ended its Yeezy deal, which was the biggest portion of Ye’s net worth
By Jaclyn Peiser and Jacob Bogage
Updated October 25, 2022 at 8:17 p.m. EDT|Published October 25, 2022 at 6:55 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/25/adidas-kanye-west-partnership-ends/
I hear you, that damage is exactly what Putin is working on inflicting. And they were just a bunch of suckers giving that letter out. I expect that stuff from Putin's Trumpians or the New GOP, but definitely expect a whole lot better out of the more intelligent or democracy side of the isle.
They withdrew it. Shouldn't have ever happened in the first place. ANYTHING given to Putin will have extreme cost into the future. It was said to be written some time back and "accidently" got sent out. Whatever.
Putin's got an out. Get the hell out of Ukraine, stop murdering, torturing, and blowing up it's people and their offspring. And then reparations to the max for rebuilding Ukraine.
Progressive Democrats retract Biden Ukraine letter after furious debate
Dramatic U-turn from progressive caucus, withdrawing letter sent to US president urging talks to end war in Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/25/democrats-joe-biden-ukraine-war-russia-letter
Him and his whole right wing clan, including his sister DeVos.
An excerpt from the 2021 Times article, but they have witch hunts, an upside-down bible, and an old laptop to control trumptards amygdala.
Here's the site;
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talking-feds/id1456045551
When I'm using desktop OS Windows 11 Pro, this free download works on that platform for those podcasts. Not sure on any other OS like Win 10, or Android that might conflict too much with Apple product. That's if your not on Apple with iTunes already of course.
https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/itunes/9PB2MZ1ZMB1S?hl=en-us&gl=us
Makes sense on the red hair. There was a whole population of Vikings (which the Valerians were) that had a lot of red hair. Don't know enough of ancient history, only what I've read, and don't know whether Prince Oleg of Kievian Rus ancestry came from from the Vikings in western Scandinavia or the Norsemen who had a lot of blonde hair. Probably both populated the land at that time and Rus meaning red could have been a thing.
But Moscovites is good, "when in Rome......".
Wonder why they don't call them Varyags or maybe Olegs after the Varangian prince. Depends on how far back they want to go I guess.
I don't see embarrassment. The upward lift of eyebrows and if you look close enough the wrinkles in the forehead shows anxiety and/or fear, a blank look not focused on anywhere in particular can be showing sadness or helplessness, the whole body what you can see is not relaxed or showing that she really wants to be there, tensed veins in her hand and wrists indicating it's her unwanted duties from a man with features that I can only describe as evil and cruel. I could be wrong, but that's what I see, something terribly wrong with the picture. Hope the Ukrainians nail his ass to the wall at any rate.
Instead of leaving you with that picture, here's a laugh to be had.
Dog and rooster play a hilarious game of chase
— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) October 21, 2022
🎥 tammy.sattler16 pic.twitter.com/MEeGNHf1Jq
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
·
40m
The Ukrainian intelligence agency SBU has detained 83-y-old Vyacheslav Boguslaev, CEO & one of the main shareholders of Ukrainian plane and helicopter engine giant Motor Sich, on suspicion of treason.
He apparently sold engines to the Russian Army.
He earlier sold MS to China.
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
·
36m
Boguslaev was always known as a Russophile and a good friend of Yanukovych.
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
Aggregating and curating news, politics, current affairs, history and culture from Central and Eastern Europe.????????????????
Visegradvisegrad24.orgJoined January 2020
653 Following
305.8K Followers
Followed by Rep. Liz Cheney, Alex Alvarova????Victory to Ukraine??Author, and Julia Davis
https://twitter.com/visegrad24
More on China and its state controlled business.
A report by Germany’s public broadcaster shows Scholz is blocking the initiative of the Economy Ministry, supported by Germany’s intelligence agency, to stop the Chinese attempt to buy a significant part of the Port of Hamburg.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 22, 2022
The agency views it as critical infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/M2UkrPRoLm
DOJ says it needs more money for the Jan. 6 probe. The next spending bill may be its last chance.
The Justice Department says extra funding is "critically needed" to sustain its investigation into Jan. 6, but the message hasn't broken through with some on the Hill.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/doj-says-needs-money-jan-6-probe-spending-bill-may-last-chance-rcna51767
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration says it is in critical need of more money to bring the Jan. 6 rioters to justice. But it’s not clear Congress will grant that request in a major funding bill planned for December. And if it fails to do so before the new year, a potential Republican-led House could imperil the resources they need.
With just weeks of work left in this Congress, the future of the sprawling federal criminal investigation into the thousands of rioters who stormed the building in support of then-President Donald Trump rests, in part, in the hands of congressional appropriators who craft funding bills to keep the government running.
“There are lots of requests,” House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said when asked about the Department of Justice's request for the extra Jan. 6 funding in the year-end bill. “We’re taking a look at all of them and seeing what makes it and seeing what doesn’t make it.”
The Justice Department has called Jan. 6 “the most wide-ranging investigation” in its history, with more than 870 arrests so far. For 21 months, the investigation, led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, has largely been propped up with help from 93 federal prosecutors' offices from across the country who are volunteering personnel.
But the work is far from over and the department needs more resources to move full-speed ahead, more than a dozen sources close to the investigation told NBC News in July. As one official put it, "We don’t have the manpower."
Online sleuths had identified hundreds of additional Jan. 6 rioters who have not yet been arrested; one of the sleuths who is closely tracking the Justice Department’s caseload noted that the number of outstanding cases is going down, with sentences now outpacing new arrests, which have slowed to roughly four per week since the beginning of 2022. That falls far below the number of arrests made in 2021, which have kept the court docket in federal court in D.C. loaded up as cases work their way through the process.
While a new crop of assistant U.S. attorneys filling temporary roles could help pick up the pace of arrests in the coming months, the long-term trajectory of the criminal probe depends in part on the fiscal year 2023 budget, which Congress is planning to pass in December, around the time the Jan. 6 committee is expected to issue its final report.
The Justice Department has told Congress that more than $34 million in funding is "critically needed" to fund the investigation.
“The cases are unprecedented in scale and is expected to be among the most complex investigations prosecuted by the Department of Justice,” the Justice Department wrote to the legislative branch.
Failure to get extra funds, the department said, will have a “detrimental impact” on U.S. Attorney's Offices across the country, which would “need to incur a budget reduction to fund these prosecutions.” That, in turn, could keep offices from filling vacancies and prosecuting other important cases in their home jurisdictions, the Justice Department told Congress.
Congress has until Dec. 16 to strike a funding agreement and negotiators plan to return after the Nov. 8 election to try to hash out a full-year deal. Before they broke for recess, lawmakers involved in the talks told NBC News that the fate of the Justice request was still unsettled.
While the department has conveyed its needs to the Hill, senior lawmakers said they were not aware that the future of the Jan. 6 investigation could depend on the next budget round.
“There are a lot of items that are up in the air at this point. We are negotiating at the highest levels, and I don’t actually know where that provision might be," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, the No. 2 Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
Dominion CEO says unfounded voter fraud claims have put employees ‘into danger’
BY DOMINICK MASTRANGELO - 10/21/22 11:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3698392-dominion-ceo-says-unfounded-voter-fraud-claims-have-put-employees-into-danger/
Arizona refers voter intimidation report to Justice Department
Kyung Lah
By Kyung Lah, CNN
Updated 7:29 PM EDT, Thu October 20, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/20/politics/arizona-voter-intimidation-report-justice-department/index.html
The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office has referred to the US Department of Justice and Arizona Attorney General’s Office a report of voter intimidation, Murphy Hebert, spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, confirmed to CNN on Wednesday.
The unidentified voter reported that they were approached and followed by a group of individuals when the voter was trying to drop off their ballot at an early voting drop box on Monday, according to Hebert.
CNN on Thursday obtained from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office the report in which the voter detailed the alleged incident. It occurred, the voter wrote, around 6:40 p.m. at the Juvenile Justice Court drop box in Mesa, within Maricopa County.
The voter wrote that a “group of people” filmed, photographed and raised accusations against them as they attempted to return their early ballots.
“There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot dropbox filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the dropbox and accusing us of being a mule,” the voter said, adding that the group took photographs of them, their license plate and followed them out of the parking lot.
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The secretary of state’s office talked to the voter, informed Maricopa County, and referred the report to the DOJ and Arizona attorney general for further investigation.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer held a news conference last week and told reporters that people had been recording voters dropping off their ballots at the Mesa drop box. But this new complaint is an escalation from those initial reports.
CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who has embraced the politics of former President Donald Trump’s election lies and has not committed to accepting the results of her own race if she loses, said on Wednesday that she hadn’t “heard anything about” the report, but immediately seized on it to promote a central plank of her campaign.
“I haven’t heard anything about it. It just shows you how concerned people are, though. People are so concerned about the integrity of our election and this is another reason, Kate, this is another reason we have to restore integrity,” she told CNN’s Kate Sullivan at a campaign event in Scottsdale.
Lake continued, “We can’t have half of the population or more doubting our elections. It’s not impossible to restore honesty and integrity to our elections. And I assure you, when I’m governor, we will do that.”
This story has been updated with additional reaction.